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A 

SERMON 

PREACHED 
IN THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ALBANY, 

SABBATH EVENING, MAY 11, 1831. 



AND REPEATED, BY SPECIAL REQUEST, ON THE ENSUING TUESDAY EVENING, IN 
THE SECOND REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH, 



IN BEHALF OF THE 



POLISH EXILES 



LATELY ARRIVED IN THIS COUNTRY. 



By WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. 

MINISTER OF THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



ALBANY: 

PRINTED BY PACKARD AND VAN BENTHOYSEN. 

1834. 









Whatever profits may arise from the sale of tliis discourse, will be applied for 
the relief of the Polish exiles. 






TO 

ERASTUS CORNING, Esq. 

Mayor of the city of Albany, 

THIS DISCOURSE, 

PREACHED IN BEHALF OF AN OBJECT TO WHICH HE HAS MOST GENE- 
ROUSLY LENT HIS AID, 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 

AS AN EXPRESSION OF REGARD, 

BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND, 

W. B. S. 

Albany, May 15, 1834. 



SERMON. 



HEBREWS, XIII. 3. 

Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them, and them 
which suffer adversity as being yourselves also in the body. 

The apostle commences this chapter by exhort- 
ing the Hebrew christians to the general duty of 
brotherly love. In the passage just read, he re- 
minds them particularly of their obligations to ad- 
minister, according to their ability, to the relief of 
those oppressed brethren whose attachment to the 
christian faith had subjected them to persecution 
and imprisonment; and, as an argument for the 
discharge of this duty, he alludes to the considera- 
tion that they and their afflicted brethren possessed 
a common nature, and were alike subject to human 
calamity. You will, I think, readily perceive that 
the passage suggests a train of thought not inap- 
propriate to the present occasion. 

I. Let us contemplate, for a moment, the duty 
which the text enjoins : it is charity to the wretch- 
ed and necessitous. 

In respect to the properties of christian charity, 
I remark, in the first place, that it is active. There 
1 



is a kind of sentimental benevolence, whose praises 
have often been celebrated by infidel philosophy, 
which knows no other element than the field of list- 
less contemplation. She talks much of the delight- 
ful emotions of sympathy, and is fruitful in specu- 
lations concerning the relief of human wo; but her 
pretensions are miserably hollow and false. You 
will never see her wandering into the retreats of 
poverty, or descending into the dungeon of the cri- 
minal, or ministering around the couch of the dy- 
ing. She exhausts her zeal in clamoring about 
what others ought to do, or what she would do, but 
you ask in vain for the record of what she has done. 
" Be ye warmed and be ye clothed," is the saluta- 
tion with which she greets the children of want ; 
while she turns coldly away from their miseries and 
refuses to lift a hand for their relief. 

Not so with that heaven-born charity which 
breathes in the gospel. She scatters blessings 
wherever she moves. She is indeed no friend to 
ostentatious parade ; and instead of sounding a 
trumpet to let you know when she is out upon er- 
rands of mercy, she moves noiseless as the falling 
dew, and you can trace her only by the blessings 
which precede her march and follow in her train. 
But instead of merely greeting the hungry and 
naked with smiles and good wishes, she administers 
the more substantial relief of food and raiment. 
Instead of bidding the sufferer dry up his tears be- 
cause they are unphilosophical and useless, she 
wipes them away with her own kind hand, and 
points upward, through this pathway of tribulation, 



to the christian mourner's everlasting home. Her 
tears were made for better purposes than to be shed 
over a novel : her heart beats to other scenes of wo 
than the wild and feverish dreams of imagination. 

Several of the infidel philosophers of the last cen- 
tury, have speculated finely on the subject of phi- 
lanthropy, and have thrown out occasional senti- 
ments from which it might be inferred that they 
were among the most benevolent of men. But who 
that has any knowledge of their history does not 
know that their professions were a cover to the 
basest selfishness and the most iron-hearted misan- 
thropy ? All that they had to do with human wo 
was done in their closets : they had neither the 
courage nor the disposition to go out into the world 
and encounter it in living reality. Even the com- 
mon sympathies of nature were to a great extent 
congealed under the chilling influence of the sys- 
tems they embraced. Yes, with the sweet sounds 
of charity upon their lips, as if they were good 
angels directly from Heaven, they could be sum- 
moning to their aid the very artillery of the pit to 
prosecute a malignant warfare upon human happi- 
ness : they could blast the best hopes of their fel- 
low men, and smile when the work was done : they 
could listen to the knell of death amid the scenes 
of a revolution, every line of whose history is writ- 
ten in blood, and find it sweet music to their ears. 
Call not these men benevolent : they were imbued 
with the very spirit of the world below; and their 
names stand out, and will always stand out, with ap- 
palling prominence, on the dark record of human 
malignity. 



4 

But from these examples of pretended philanthro- 
py, turn, for a moment, to some of the real and bright 
achievements of christian charity. Let me mention 
here a name which will not dishonor the sacredness 
of the place in w hich I stand ; — I mean the illustri- 
ous name of Howard ; a name which every child 
has learned to identify with all that is generous, 
and disinterested, and holy, in man, and which will 
lose none of its lustre so long as there remains a 
record of the most exalted and heroic virtue. 
Was it enough for that apostle of benevolence to 
speculate on human misery, and to greet the chil- 
dren of sorrow with a complacent look, or a kind 
salutation ? No ; there was in his bosom the sanc- 
tified spirit of philanthropic action; a spirit that 
made him regard the world as his field, because he 
saw that human suffering was every where ; a spi- 
rit that made him forget the fatigue of incessant ex- 
ertion, the damps of the prisoner's cell, the loath- 
someness of the sick man's couch, and even the at- 
mosphere impregnated with death. Howard, thrice 
honored be the venerable name ! It shall go down 
through successive generations with accumulating 
glory; it shall be pronounced with reverence in the 
prison and the lazaretto ; and while it shall shine 
out on the catalogue of the ransomed in the Lamb's 
book of life, it shall live in the grateful remembran- 
ces and benedictions of thousands through their 
whole eternity ! 

It is another property of christian charity that it 
is enlightened. It recognises man as a being of in- 
tellect ; and requires the exercise of reflection and 



judgment. An indiscriminate charity could scarce- 
ly be considered a virtue ; and instead of contribut- 
ing to the good of those towards whom it might 
be directed, it would often operate to their injury. 
You perceive, at once, that propriety would dictate 
a very different course in respect to an individual 
who should ask your aid in consequence of having 
been reduced to want by the righteous providence 
of God, and whose character was a pledge that 
your alms would not be misapplied, and another 
individual who should present himself at your door 
staggering under the influence of intoxication, and 
begging for money with a manifest intention to 
squander it on his beastly appetite. What would 
be charity in the one case, would be no better than 
cruelty in the other. If then you would be truly 
charitable, you must bring judgment to your aid, 
that you may determine which are the really de- 
serving objects : otherwise your alms may be in- 
strumental of evil, where you really design to ac- 
complish good. 

In this world where misery exists in so many 
forms, there must always be a wide field for the ex- 
ercise of christian philanthropy. Where there is so 
much ignorance to be enlightened, so much super- 
stition to be removed, so much sorrow to be reliev- 
ed, the true philanthropist can never be at loss for 
objects on which to fasten his charitable regards. 
At the same time, the very number and variety of 
the objects that present themselves, may sometimes 
serve to embarrass him in his selection. But let 
him choose under the influence of judgment rather 



?.,' 



than feeling, taking counsel of an enlightened con- 
science, and seeking direction from the Father of 
lights, and he will be in little danger of committing 
an error. 

I remark, once more, that christian charity is 
controlled in its operations by a regard to the will 
of God. There is a chord in almost every human 
bosom which vibrates to the touch of sorrow. A 
person possessing the common feelings of humani- 
ty cannot witness scenes of deep distress without 
some emotions of sympathy ; and where the heart 
is peculiarly alive to the sufferings of others, such 
emotions will sometimes rise so high as to be well 
nigh overwhelming. It is, no doubt, to this feature 
of our original constitution that we are to attribute 
many of those noble and generous deeds which 
awaken our gratitude and admiration, and which 
are often spoken of in the world as, of course, evi- 
dencing a title to immortal glory. But much as we 
may admire a naturally benevolent and sympathetic 
spirit, it were a wretched perversion of God's truth 
to say that the exercise of such a spirit, while un- 
sanctified by the Holy Ghost, could constitute, in 
the eye of Heaven, acceptable charity. In a gust of 
natural feeling, you may give all your goods to feed 
the poor, and this act may place you high on the 
list of earthly benefactors ; and yet, if it be not 
done from a regard to the will of God, it can never 
turn to your account as an act of genuine christian 
philanthropy. Not that the christian, in the exer- 
cise of his charity, may not feel all the enthusiasm 
of a naturally benevolent heart, and be under the 



Li 



influence of the kindliest feelings that belong to hu- 
man nature ; but then, in addition to this, he re- 
gards the authority of God as supreme ; and the 
consideration which crowns all the rest, is a desire 
to glorify God by obeying his commandments. 

II. Having thus presented before you the duty 
enjoined in the text, let me now, secondly, direct 
your thoughts, for a moment, to the argument by 
which the apostle enforces it. It is drawn from the 
fact that we are all partakers of a common nature ; 
members of the same great family. " Remember 
* * * them that suffer adversity, as being yourselves 
also in the body.^^ 

The fact that we are in the body, and inhabitants 
of this world of sorrow, is a sufficient reason why 
we should always live in expectation of adversity. 
Be it that you have hitherto always been prospered 
— yet you must have kept your eyes closed on the 
experience of your fellow men, and the common 
course of the world, not to be convinced that you 
are liable, any moment, to see your prosperity come 
to an end. Be it that you are rich — yet can you 
observe how easily the riches of others have taken 
to themselves wings, without being compelled to 
feel that all you have may soon be gone ? Possibly 
you may have never had occasion for human sym- 
pathy on account of the loss of near friends ; and 
yet can you look out upon the mourning proces- 
sions that daily pass through our streets, without 
realizing that you are constantly liable to the sor- 
rows of bereavement ? Perhaps you have gloried in 
an iron constitution; and in the dreams of your 



8 

self-confif'ence, you may have sometimes flattered 
yourself that the shocks of a century would leave it 
unimpaired ; but you surely can not repose in any 
such delusions, when you see how the strength of 
the giant is but as tow, before the mighty hand of 
disease. Suppose then — and in making the sup- 
position, I surely impose no great tax upon your 
credulity — suppose, a little while hence, you should 
be the subject of poverty, or sickness, or bereave- 
ment, or all of them united, what treatment would 
you desire, what might you reasonably expect, from 
those around you ? Would it not be a balm to your 
feelings, to see some benefactor stepping forward 
to aid you in your poverty ; some sympathizing 
friend to divide with you your burden of sorrow ; 
some generous physician, to minister around your 
sick bed, even though he knew that you were too 
poor to reward him for his services ? " Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them." 

In a world abounding with changes like the pre- 
sent, no man can say that his prosperity will last for 
an hour ; or that the person who is now the object 
of his charity may not soon be administering chari- 
ty to him. The best security you can have against 
being neglected or forsaken in the day of adversity, 
is to show yourself always the friend of suffering 
humanity. Rarely indeed is the truly charitable 
man ever left to want ; and the influence of his good 
deeds extends even to his children ; just as the ini- 
quities of parents are often, in a thousand ways, vi- 
sited upon their off*spring. Did you ever have an 



LJ 



application for charity from one whose father or 
whose mother had been distinguished in the walks 
of active benevolence ? Then I know you did not 
refuse it ; for there was something in your heart 
that told you that that son or daughter must be bless- 
ed for the parent's sake. 

But suppose you were certain that you should 
never need the sympathy or the charity of others, 
it would still be your duty to extend your sympathy 
and charity to them, because you have a common 
nature with them, and they are your brethren. They 
may have their lot cast in some part of the world 
to which you never have had, and never will have, 
access ; the wide ocean may roll between you and 
them ; they may speak a language which you can 
not understand, and may have grown up under in- 
fluences to which you are a stranger ; and yet they 
and you are children of the same Father, partakers 
of the same nature, candidates for the same immor- 
tality, and capable alike of enjoying the blessings 
of this life and of another. Suppose then they send 
to you the story of their sorrows and their wants, 
could you, without forgetting the relationship you 
sustain to them, withhold the relief that was within 
your power ? Suppose they should actually come 
with the sad tale of their misfortunes upon their 
lips ; or suppose they should gather around you in 
all their wretchedness, and let you learn from their 
scars, and their rags, that they had been first in 
battle, and then in captivity, and had lost every 
thing but the breath of life ; — if, under such cir- 
2 



10 

cumstances, you should turn a deaf car, would not 
conscience lift up her voice to charge you with an 
offence against nature ? Would you dare look up to 
Heaven and call God your Father, after having been 
thus inattentive to the wants of some of his children ? 

* In passing to the particular object of our meet- 
ing this evening, it is due to myself to say that I 
appear before you under the disadvantage of the 
most hurried preparation ; the only time that I have 
been able to allot to it having been the intervals be- 
tween our public services during the day. But when 
I heard the case stated this morning by the benevo- 
lent individualf who has taken the lead in this phi- 
lanthropic enterprize, when I perceived that he was 
enlisted with a generous enthusiasm in behalf of 
those, the very recital of whose sufferings is enough 
to make the ear tingle and the blood curdle, I could 
not refuse to become a co-worker with him in this 
labor of love ; and to give you an opportunity to 
assemble in the house of God to-night, to testify by 
your alms that you know how to " remember them 
that suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the 
body." 

I shall simply state a few facts which have been 
furnished me, as the ground on which, in the name 
of suffering humanity, in the venerable name of 
Christianity herself, I am about to solicit your cha- 
rities. 

Of the recent history of the fortunes, or rather 
the misfortunes, of Poland, it is unnecessary that I 

• This paragraph was omitted, and the succeeding one modified, in the de- 
livery of the discourse the second time. 
t Wm. Wood, Esq. 



11 

should speak. It is fresh in the memories of all of 
you, how manfully she struggled to resist the op- 
pressor ; how her heart's blood flowed out like wa- 
ter in the righteous cause of her own freedom ; and 
how, at length, the protracted conflict terminated 
in her being ground to the dust. We who had our- 
selves known what it was to be oppressed, and what 
it was to have been set free, partly by the blessing 
of God on the heroic efforts of some of this very 
nation, kept our eye fixed with intense solicitude on 
that eventful struggle, until the dying groan of Po- 
lish liberty reached our ears : and I appeal to your 
own recollection, whether it was not as if the cold 
air of death were sweeping over our own free insti- 
tutions, when we heard it announced that the op- 
pressor of that noble people had triumphed ? In the 
providence of God more than two hundred of that 
very people have recently alighted on our shores ; 
a small part of this number have come to our city ; 
they are with us here to-night ; and I avail myself 
of their entire ignorance of our language to tell 
you, in few words, the story of their misfortunes, 
without running the hazard of wounding their ex- 
treme delicacy. These men then, who are before 
you, were engaged in fighting the battles of their 
country for nearly three years; and being over- 
powered by hordes of Russians, they took tempo- 
rary refuge in a province (formerly a portion of 
their own soil) of the Austrian dominions ; and hav- 
ing suflfered every thing but death, they were actu- 
ally chained like felons, and thus thrown into carts, 
and transported thence nearly eight hundred miles 



12 

to an Austrian seaport ; and then they were per- 
mitted to choose between Siberia and America as 
their place of destination ; though, in either case, 
they must leave parents, wives, children, to the mer- 
cy of Russian bayonets. They chose America; 
and hither they have come in all their want and 
wretchedness ; and their presence this evening 
must, I am sure, call into exercise your liveliest 
sympathies. Let it be remembered that they are 
not vulgar and uneducated men, who were born to 
the prospect of a life of penury : on the contrary, 
they are men of considerable intellectual culture, of 
high and honorable feelings, and some of them are 
connected with families of rank, and have been ac- 
customed to move in circles of distinction. I am 
assured by the gentleman already alluded to, that 
the idea of asking charity exceedingly revolts their 
feelings, notwithstanding the iron pressure of their 
necessities ; and that what they most of all desire 
is, that they may be furnished with some employ- 
ment, no matter how humble it may be, by means 
of which they may provide for their own subsis- 
tence.* They come to find a refuge among us from 
the bloody horrors of a most disastrous revolution ; 
and they come, of course, in all the want and wretch- 
edness of exiles ; but they bring with them a spirit 
of subordination and industry, and a determination 
to render themselves worthy and useful citizens. 

* It will be gratifying to those who are interested for the welfare of these 
unfortunate men, to know that, since the delivery of this discourse, the whole 
number who came to this city the last week, amounting to twenty-six, have 
had places provided for them, in which they are likely to be comfortable and 
useful. 



13 

I have told you the story of the sufferings of 
these men just as it has been related to me ; and of 
the truth of it there is not the shadow of reason to 
doubt. But I am persuaded that what you have 
now heard would seem frigid and uninteresting, 
compared with the heart rending detail which tJiey 
would give, if they were able to speak for them- 
selves: and I can imagine that if what has been 
passing in their minds, while I have been speaking, 
could, by any means, be communicated to our own, 
we should be eager to dismiss from our thoughts 
such scenes of blood and wo as would rise up be- 
fore us. I can imagine that while I have been 
spreading their case before you, they have been go- 
ing back to the joys of other days j to the comforts 
of a peaceful domestic fireside ; to the cheerful in- 
terchange of kind affections ; to the warm greetings 
of parental, or filial, or conjugal tenderness; to the 
bright scenes of their childhood, and even of their 
riper years, when every thing around them smiled, 
and the oppressor's hand was not lifted to crush 
them. I can imagine that they have been dwelling 
on the sad contrast between their earlier and later 
days ; that they have been calling up in melancholy 
succession the scenes of agony and horror through 
which they have passed, and have thought how, af- 
ter all their sacrifices and sufferings, the light of 
freedom has gone out in their beloved land, and a 
darkness that can be felt — the darkness of an iron 
despotism, has settled over it. I can suppose that 
the endeared name of wife, or mother, or daughter, 
has darted before their eyes written in characters of 



14 

blood; that they have thought of the pang which 
accompanied the last look before the final separa- 
tion ; and that their hearts have been ready to over- 
flow when they have remembered the playfulness 
and the loveliness of their own little ones, who once 
hung upon their knees as your children do upon 
yours, but who have been butchered before their 
eyes, or driven into perpetual exile. Yes, my 
friends, these men carry about with them in their 
memories a record of woes that would appal any of 
us; and surely we will not pity them the less, we 
will not pray for them the less, we will not help 
them the less, because, being strangers on our 
shores, they are unable to tell us the story of their 
sufferings. 

Brethren and friends, have not these unfortunate 
men already found a place in your generous sympa- 
thies, in your charitable regards? I should wrong 
you to suppose that the brief story of their suffer- 
ings to which you have listened, had left you un- 
moved; or that it is in your heart to see them in 
the midst of you, and especially in the sanctuary, 
where you come to acknowledge yourselves debt- 
ors for every thing, and yet say to them, in the spi- 
rit of a heartless and infidel philosophy, " Depart in 
peace." No, my friends, you will do no such thing. 
You will show by your offerings, and by the spirit 
which dictates them, that a generous heart, a sym- 
pathizing heart, — may I not say in respect to many 
of you — a christian heart, is beating in your bosom. 
But before you deposit your gifts, let me remind 
you that the individuals for whom your charity is 



15 

solicited, are the countrymen of the illustrious Kosr 
ciusko and Pulaski, whose names shine out so 
brightly in the history of our revolution ; who stood 
up with our fathers to fight the battles that secured 
our independence, and one of whom offered himself 
up on the field, a martyr to American liberty. Re- 
member too, that you are the children of those who 
embarked their fortunes and their lives in a bloody 
conflict for freedom; and that if Heaven had not 
been propitious in giving them the victory, you 
might yourselves have been the sons of slaves, 
groaning under the hand of oppression, or perhaps 
flying to the ends of the earth for an asylum. Re- 
member also, that though you live in a free coun- 
try, you live in a mutable world; and the day may 
come when even the grave of American liberty shall 
be dug; and this land shall drink the blood of its 
own inhabitants ; and the glory of our republican 
institutions shall be trampled in the dust; and you 
or your children be chained to a despot's car, and 
grace a despot's triumph. I do not predict such an 
event; and I pray the God of all goodness, who 
has been the protector of our nation's liberties hith- 
erto, that it may never occur; but when I see how 
the spirit of revolution is abroad among the nations, 
and especially when I open my ear to the din of 
party strife which is raging on every side, I dare 
not say that these clouds which flit about here and 
there in our political atmosphere, may not, by some 
fearful principle of attraction, be drawn together, 
and concentrate in terrific blackness their angry 
elements, and burst upon this land in a wild storm, 



.'•: 



16 

which shall uproot the tree of liberty which was 
planted at the expense of the blood of our fathers, 
and which had begun to yield fruit for the healing 
of other nations. I say again, may the merciful 
God avert from us this doom; but if it should be so, 
and the night-clouds of an ignoble bondage should 
come over this land, and you should be driven from 
your wives, and daughters, and mothers, into a fo- 
reign country, and should land upon the shores of 
another nation in all the depths of poverty and wo, 
and should be unable to tell the story of your own 
wrongs, say what would be so grateful to you, what 
would help so much to abate the anguish of recol- 
lection, as to be greeted by the spirit of christian 
philanthropy; to see the stranger stepping forth to 
give you a brother's hand ? Put thy soul then, O 
man, in his soul's stead ; and by the tide of sorrow- 
ful recollection which w^ould then press upon thee, 
and by the painful embarrassments which would 
cluster about thee, — resolve, with thine ear open to 
the voice of conscience, and thine eye open upon 
the retributions of eternity, — resolve how this ap- 
peal in behalf of thine exiled, suffering brother, shall 
be answered. 



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